Big Fun on Maui!

I believe I've mentioned I've been occasionally house-sitting  Well one of the trades I received from my friend Mindy (for watching two delightful kitties and a cute apartment) was a year of free flights through Allegiant Airlines! I've had the opportunity to fly to California and back, offer a discount to a friend, and most recently, fly to Maui! Wren and I decided to go, and the idea was, cheap tickets, cheap vacation, and BIG FUN!

First off, our plane was delayed 5 hours, so we got to juggle and meet a nice guy named Eli from All Star Circus. He told us about Source Maui, a BurningMan-esque show on.... We ended up not going for transportation and weather reasons, but it sure sounded like fun! So rolling in around 2 in the morning, we just camped on a beach for a few hours until our hostel ride could get us... this photo above is us walking in the rain to the pick-up place.

Our next stop was a frisbee tournament (organized by a guy named Mustache Brook!) on Kapalua, right by the beach! Wren played frisbee, and I played on the beach =)

Here was our next camping spot, right on the water at camp Olowalu.

It was just a 10 minute walk from the snow cone store!

And at night, our little camp was gorgeous... and from there (and just about everywhere you see water), we saw so many wales breaching!

Public transportation was limited, so we hitched a ride into Lahaina, once in the back of a pickup truck!

Once in Lahaina, we went to see the largest Banyon tree in the US!

And this banana tree! I had no Idea this is how they were born!

Back close to our camp, we went geocaching! What a view, eh?!

Now we're bringing our little cache-prize (Sid from Ice Age) to Puerto Rico with us! All  in all, we had a super nice time exploring, lounging, eating and reading books... like the one I finished, a great adventure story titled, "The girl who circumnavigated fairyland on a ship of her own making". Check it out =). And thanks Mindy, for the tickets to BIG FUN adventure!

Vaude-Valentines and Mark Growden

For the fourth consecutive year, Anneka has coordinated the Valentines Day show for the Circus.

This year I was lucky enough to perform two acts with two of my most favorite people. Mylee came up for almost two weeks, and in that time, we finished choreographing and costuming the routine we performed for the Valentine's day show. We originally did it for our friend Mark Growden's show which was the week before Valentines day, and we also performed it at Vaudevillingham for a total of 3 performances! Here's the video from Valentines Day... it starts around 40 seconds.

Here's the video of Wren (the other of my most favorite people in no particular order) and I performing our re-worked version of the rope act as "The Knotty Nuptuals" at the Valentines Day show.

And we couldn't help but get "roped in" to the photo booth manned by the the incomparable Jeff Lefferts!

Here is the second act Mylee and I performed at Vaudevillingham... I love my job in this one... Don a moustache? Check. Look tough? Check. Get danced-up on by a beautiful woman? Check!

For Mark Growden's show, JustinCredible (first photo) put an act to Mark's song Saint Judas... here's the video and two fun photos of us together.

There were lots of other awesome acts for Valentines Day and Vaudevillingham. If you get a chance, come check out Vaudevillingham the 15th of every month at our new space 1401 6th Street off Harris in Fairhaven. To know of other awesome circusings or to help be reminded of Vham, you can sign up to receive our monthly newsletter at our website bellinghamcircusguild.com! 

Clowning Around

I feel so lucky to have had an introduction to clown work.  It has been one of the most enlightening, trans-formative work I have ever done. It pushes, stretches, and squeezes me out of my comfort zone in ways that allow me to see and understand myself more deeply... for the good and the ugly.  My interest in this work is for performance professionalism, but mostly, for becoming a better person.  It has helped me understand myslef better, communicate more honestly, and share and listen more deeply.

 This is the cast of the (Eternal Debut of the) Poupon Parade, a group of clowns that I had the pleasure of working with in Canada in 2012.

 This is Islando and my act as Picante and Shiza'am to "Sweet Dreams" that we made immediately after our Baby Clown course with David McMurray Smith.

 This is the cast of the Banunky Fun Force (minus Mike Mathew), a show we put together to open for Le Serpent Rouge at the Wild Buffalo in 2011... lots of clown inspiration here (Chipps, Jules, Islando, Justincredible).

 The cast of the Super Hero Boy Band... all clowns who took David's Deep Clown class... one I hope to take in the future. (Aaron Malkin, Islando Bocock, Alaistar Knowles)

 The chair dance is an act I made in 2009 that I have been continuing to perform and tweak with help from clown work.

This is the group at the latest workshop I took called in Canada called, Presence, Play, and the Red Nose, a weekend workshop by Justine Williams of the Glass Contraption from NYC. It was great fun. She suggested her mentor Christopher Bays for more classes... I'f anyone's interested... =)

The Pie Hole

So one fun thing that has happened recently is La Fiamma owner, Ken Bothman, asked the Circus Guild if they'd like to perform 3 nights a week in front of their new attraction, The Pie Hole. It's a late night pizza-by-the-slice business for the Thurs-Sat downtown crowd  looking for "after-hours" delicious eats. Wren and I decided to be one of the evenings' entertainers.

Wren (who also has a blog post about this) was a fire-juggling slice of pizza! "Get you're wood-fire, flaming hot pizza!" we would bellow.

I was in the warmest costume I could find... it was such a chilly night!

Wren was great at getting people involved. We taught juggling and rope tricks to the late-night revelers who were passing by... this guy with the anchor shirt and his lady friend hung out for almost an hour with us! Almost more impressive than their tenacity for learning, was their resilience or even disregard for the freezing temperature! All in all it was a great experience. So if you get a chance, check out the Pie hole at La Fiamma Thursdays-Saturdays from 11:30pm-2:00am! http://www.facebook.com/PieHoleBham